The Representations of Arabs, Islam and Muslims in the United States from 1820 to the Arab Uprisings

Syllabus

JMM707

The Representations of Arabs, Islam and Muslims in the United States from 1820 to the Arab Uprisings

Schedule: Thursdays 9:30 am -10:50 am

Room: J3015

Capacity: 40

Instructor: Dr. Anna Raymond Viden

Office Hours: Thursdays 11: am - noon (room 3080)

E-mail: [e-mail], [e-mail]

Target audience: MA-students who wish to gain a better understanding of the perceptions and the representations of Arabs, Islam and Muslims in the United States in a historic perspective

Course Objectives and Course Description:

Since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil Islamic extremism has been a constant feature in U.S. political and media discourse. The "Global War on Terror" launched by the George W. Bush administration shortly after these attacks and the concurrent political discourse has given rise to a conflation between Islam and terrorism one the one hand and between mainstream Muslims and Islamic extremism on the other. The objective of this course is to examine and analyze these discourses in order to deconstruct the amalgamation between Islam and extremism. This is especially important in the current context with the recent terrorist acts linked to Islamic extremism in France and in Denmark.

If we wish to gain a deeper understanding of contemporary American representations of Arabs, Muslims and Islam more specifically, it is necessary to start this investigation by studying the images and the representations of the American protestant missionaries who had started to travel in the Middle East, and the Levant in particular, in the 1820s. The narratives of the American Protestant missionaries will be contrasted with travel narratives of wealthy Americans traveling to Palestine after the American Civil War which ended in 1865. The writings of Mark Twain (or Samuel Clemens his real name) constitutes an interesting example of this genre which became popular during the second half of the 19th century. We will examine Twains contribution to this genre, through our reading of his famous Innocents Abroad, which was published in 1869. This leads us the issue of Orientalism and the Orientalist debate provoked by the publication in 1978 of Edward Said’s seminal work Orientalism. As a continuation of the discussion started in Orientalism Said published Covering Islam in 1981. This book was largely influenced by the media coverage of Arabs and Muslims during the 1973 and 1974 oil embargo imposed on the United States and other Western countries by Arab oil producers for their support of Israel during the 1973 October War. This coverage brought to the fore negative representations of Arabs, Islam and Muslims from the past. Another important juncture in the shaping of the images of Arabs, Muslims and Islam in the United States is the post-1945 U.S. expansion in the Middle East. This expansion was justified to the American public by a narrative which sought to legitimize the US presence in faraway, despotic and oil-rich lands (such as Saudi Arabia) in the name of American national security interests. These and other key junctures (such as the 1978 and 1979 Iranian Revolution, the Sept.11, 2001 attacks on U.S. soils and the Arab Uprisings) in the formation of the images of Arabs, Islam and Muslims in the United States will be discussed and examined in this course. A great deal of time will necessarily be dedicated to the debate on Islam and democracy, which is a recurrent theme when we talk about American representations of Arabs, Islam and Muslims. As a matter of comparison we will also bring in readings depicting anti-American representations in the Middle East.  

Core concepts and issues touched upon in the course:  

Secularism (Judeo-Christian and French laic schools of thought); Orientalism (European and American currents); U.S. exceptionalism; Wilsonian Idealism (the Universalism VS the Particularism debate regarding the spread of American Liberal Democracy); the "Arabist Debate"; the U.S. Cold War paradigm; benevolent hegemony; the Global War on Terror Paradigm; American understandings of the compatibility of Islam with democracy; Neoconservative representations and perceptions of Islam.  

Required Literature:  

All required literature will be uploaded to the SIS and in certain cases sent to you via email. Recommendations for further reading will also be provided.  

Course Assessment:  

Final exam 40%

Midterm exam 20%

Presentation 10%

Participation 30%  

Final exam:  

Your knowledge of the course material will be tested in a 24-hour take-home exam. The exam will consist of 10 short definitional questions and one longer essay question which you will be able to choose from a list of topics. The topics will be given to you one week before the actual exam in order to enable you to carry out source research and to structure and organize your paper. Three different exam dates will be provided and sign-up sheets will circulate where you can sign up for the exam.  

Preliminary Exam Dates for the Final Exam: Thursday May 28, Thursday June 4 and Thursday June 8.      

Midterm exam:  

In order to prepare yourself for the final exam, a shorter midterm exam will be given in class. The exam consists of 5 short definitional questions which will be answered in six lines maximum and two longer essay questions (half a page each) which demand a longer answer. Date: In class-exam on Thursday April 23.  

Presentation:  

You will be given the opportunity to present a reading, event or movie related to the course material and the time period (1820-2013) discussed in the seminar. The presentation should last 15 minutes and you are supposed to you use a power-point. The outline of the presentation should be sent to me 24h before the presentation so as to enable me to control the logistics. A sign-up she